There are a lot of benefits to minimizing, but it can also save you money and teach you how to be frugal. The process forces you to examine what you own and why you have it, but having less junk makes the things you really need easier to find.

Over at Get Rich Slowly, one reader Claire Brown shares her experience with decluttering and tossing out all of the unnecessary items in her life. We're not talking about a wholesale super-minimalist "I can live out of my backpack at all times" cleaning, but the kind of cleaning you always mean to do before moving house.

Well, Claire actually did it, and took the process a step further: before taking everything to a local charity or selling it all to strangers, she tallied up how much she had initially spent on all of the clutter. The resulting amount of money is a sober reminder of how expensive it can be to be careless when it comes to buying things you don't need in the first place. Armed with that information, she could then proudly make a point to sell the items or give them away knowing exactly how much they were worth.

In addition to keeping in mind how much it can actually cost to accumulate clutter, Claire points out that keeping fewer things in a house that's more orderly actually helps you remember where the things you use on a regular basis are. That means you'll spend less money on duplicate items or items that could be repurposed but you forgot you owned.

Claire shares some other great tips as well, including how she managed to conquer some of her guilty spending pleasures. How do you keep your clutter under control? Regular cleanings, or do you stop yourself from buying in the first place? Share your money-saving tips in the comments. Photo by David Boyle.